Sunday, December 20, 2015

Kirti Bomb Proved Political Bomb But Ineffective And Inconclusive

Majority of high value companies in India have formed or constituted or bought or borrowed hundreds of fake or non-existent companies. Anyone can verify any big or small company of the country. This may be to save income tax or to make black money. If CBI looks into records of ROC (Registrar of Companies ) , it will be proved that there are numerous cases of multiple companies registered under same address. All private business corporates are in habit of having many number of companies in their share holder's list . Banker who sanction loan to the tune of crore of rupees to private companies do not conduct due diligence of companies listed as share holder in a borrowing company. If fake companies and non-existent companies are removed , many of rich companies will have to reconstruct their share holding structure . It will be a Himalayan task to ensure that fake companies are fully eliminated from financial accounts of a high value borrowing company. Similarly fake invoices are used in almost all offices and all departments , all public offices and private sector companies and almost all firms , partnership or proprietorship firms to inflate expenses or to book bribe as expenses in their books of accounts. There use to take place many expenses in all almost all offices which cannot be shown in books of accounts which are shown expenses in some other names. If fake invoices are made base of allegation of corruption , then each and every government office, each and every private or public firms doing business, each banks under public sector and each firms doing business of Chartered Accountants will be found guilty of cheating and committing fraud. Because the dirty culture is deep rooted.Such expenses may be expenses incurred on wine parties or in distribution of bribe or expenses incurred on welcome of some VIP leader or big bosses. Sometimes these fake bills ( fake bills are those for which goods or services are not obtained in consideration of money) are prepared or demanded from genuine businessmen to compensate payment made to a company higher than normal prevalent rate . It is a common culture of business in almost all business houses and all government offices. And the most important and ironical is that all these manipulations and accommodation in bills and accounts are suggested, managed and appropriated in legal way by none other than team of Chartered Accountants and again the same illegal transactions are certified as true and genuine transactions by none other than a different or same team of Chartered Accountant. All types of inspectors come to inspect the dealings , verify and then certify the genuineness of the balance sheet so prepared as a ritual. This is a well established culture in our country. Nothing surprising fact has been revealed by Kirti Azaz for which entire country specially leaders of Non-BP camp like Congress Party and Aam Admi Party (AAP) were eagerly waiting. Entire audio-video exposure simply indicates the quality of auditing, quality of accounting and quality of governance in our country.Talk of cost escalation also seems to be rubbish. Even a simple common men initiates a project of construction of a family house, estimated cost starts from 10 lac and sometimes reaches to double or triple cost. Sometime a person visualise a house of one BHK and then extends it to two or three BHK. Same thing appear to have happened in case of price escalation in construction and extension work related to Firoz Shah Kotla stadium. If we look into history of all big PSUs and try to assess their projected cost for establishment of the planned business venture , it will be crystal clear that in majority of such ventures, project cost escalated to higher level.In the same way when a person avails bank loan of Rs.20.00 lac from a bank for construction of a house say at estimated cost of Rs.40 lac, bank ask for bill from time to time as and when construction work progress ahead. Since there are many such purchases where genuine bills are not available due to either system fault or due to some other reasons, loan taker is constrained to arrange bill at each phase of construction aggregating to Rs.40 lac to get a loan of Rs.20 lac. Similarly many expenses incurred in government offices are such which cannot be booked in black and white of for which bills are not available, the person concerned are constrained to manage false bills to enable auditors to certify the genuineness of entire transaction. I reiterate here that there are many such expenses for which genuine bills are not available . This is ground reality of Indian financial practices and habits. Majority of business men make efforts to evade tax to maximum extent . In all towns and cities , you will find office of consultants manned by clever middlemen or Chartered Accountants who suggest ways to minimise payment of taxes of all types and all these persons and offices work in nexus with tax officials only. Entire system and practices prevalent in our country are such that a truly and ideally perfect business man cannot do business peacefully. There may be some exceptions, but exception do not depict real nature of a financial culture or financial system.You may take examples of any government project or private project , price escalation is invariably the reality and one cannot avoid it. Some time cost of project rises due to delay in statutory clearances, sometime due to delay in getting loan from financial institutions, sometimes in extension in construction, sometimes due to rise in input cost, sometime due to hike in labour cost, sometimes to mechanical failure or loss due to unnatural incidents, sometimes due to demand of improvement in quality of goods and services proposed , sometimes due to change in fashion and so on. It is also possible and it cannot be denied that sometimes prices go up due to unofficial expenses, like bribe to different officials, distribution of gifts to VIP officers, Sometime in payment to local mafia men as Rangdari tax , sometime in making donations to political parties and blackmailing politicians and so on. There are many towns in many states , where a person who buys a house or starts construction of a house, he has to pay huge money to local muscle men to get protection from anti-social elements . Similarly most of business men in our country have to pay different types of gifts to different officials attached with different departments. Here the main question which should be raised are whether the construction of stadium similar to disputed Firoz Shah Kotla Stadium can be constructed in Rs22 crore or Rs.50crore or Rs.100 crore . Experts should say in brief , how much is the reasonable amount which should have been incurred in finishing the stadium and how much extra is spent. And then one should inquire who are those beneficiaries of extra amount and same should be verified from bank accounts where payment has been made by cheque. Who are CAs , officers and executives who verified and certified inflated cost without an justification. They should then look into information that more than Rs.900 crore or Rs.500 crores were spend in construction or renovation of other stadium in same town or in other town , which is more or less four to five times of what is spent in construction of said disputed Firoz Shah Kotla stadium.

Unfortunately leaders of Congress Party or that of Aam Admi Party are involved in character assassination of Mr. Arun Jaitley or tarnishing the image of Bharitya Janta Party BJP or Mr. Narendra Modi , Prime Minister of India. They are least bothered of corruption and neither they are taking any step to stop it. I say so Kirti Azad who has become a Hero today has been complaining about irregularities since long , but neither Delhi Government led by Sheila Dikshit of Congress Party nor the then UPA government led by clean Manmohan Singh could find any fault in Arun Jaitley . They carried out inquiry and investigation through FIO also and no charge could be established against Mr. Jaitley. Still leaders of Congress Party are crying in tune with AAP leaders just to make it a political issue and crate a false perception against ruling BJP , against Mr. Jaitley and Mr. Modi.

Leaders of AAP and Congress Party during all conversations on TV do not level specific charge of corruption against Mr. Jaitley but focus one and only point that Mr. Arun Jaitley was President of DDCA for ten years inspite of the fact that the investigation report submitted by a constitutional authority reported that the President Mr. Jaitley was not involved in day to day activities of DDCA. The investigation report also say that though there was some technical deficiencies but there was no financial irregularities . Still leaders of Congress Part who got the entire episode investigated during their rue are crying now against Mr. Jaitley , They do not feel shame in telling lie before national media.I like to mention here that A money bill can be introduced in the Parliament only with the President’s recommendation. The President lays the Annual Financial Statement, i.e. the Union budget, before the Parliament. The President can take advances out of the Contingency Fund of India to meet unforeseen expenses. The President constitutes a Finance commission after every five years to recommend the distribution of the taxes between the centre and the States. All types of financial bills are signed or certified by President of India.

Can we hold President of India for all scam which took place during last six to seven decades?Can we hold Manmohan Singh fully responsible and punishable for all scams which took place during ten year rule of UPA?Frauds amounting of hundreds of crores of rupees are detected in almost all public sector banks, Loans given by each PSU bank to the tune of thousands of crores of rupees are declared Non-performing Assets, loans valued thousands of crores of rupees are restructured to hide bad assets, loans valued lacs of crore of rupees are written off and hundreds of crores of bank interest is scarified in favour of bad borrowers in the name of cleaning balance sheet , and all have been certified by Team of veteran and experienced Chartered Accountants. If honest investigation is carried out majority of Branch Managers , Regional Heads, Zonal Heads will be found guilty. In such case CMD and EDs of each bank should be sent to jail because under their leadership and their monitoring , country lost lacs of crores of rupees. I am saying so, because some of politicians are demanding removal of Mr. Jaitley from the post of Finance Minister, they may ask removal of all CMDs of all banks also to enable them to investigate bank accounts. Moreover , since all PSUs are in control of FM and RBI , all FMs of past and all officials f RBI should also be sent to jail for losses caused to bank due to their deficient monitoring and evil-motivated sanctions of loans. All CAs should also be sent to jail who certified a wrong balance sheet simply to earn lucrative high audit fees.There are many organisations, Financial Institutes and government bodies where PM or CM or FM or Governor or other top dignitaries are ex-officio president of these bodies . Can we hold such ex-official responsible and punishable for fraud which take place in such FI or government bodies?Lastly , I can say that politicians like Kirti Azad or Arvind Kejriwal can try to make such issues for political advantage but they cannot help in eradication of corruption from the system . If a CM or PM want to eradicate corruption from the system , they have to work from ground level . Mr. Arvind Kejriwal CM Delhi has failed to catch evil persons holding key posts in his own party. Many ministers of AAP are charged with several criminal activities and some of them are in jail and some others are facing trial in court. Similarly Congress party lost its power only due to hundreds of scams which took place under the leadership of so called clean PM Mr. Manmohan Singh. Naturally these parties are trying to trap ruling party leaders somehow or the other, by hook or by crook , rightly or wrongly. AAP accused of protecting his Principal Secretary is trying to divert public mind and media men from evil works of his party to that of BJP, to Mr. Jaitley and to Mr. Modi .Similarly leaders of Congress Party who are fully trapped in National Herald Case are trying to change the subject of TV media and change the mind of common men by projecting false story of corruption against Mr. Arun Jaitley knowing very well that Mr. Jaitley is no where linked with corruption alleged to have taken place in case of DDCA. In course of mutual mud slinging process initiated by all political parties, real work related to development is delayed, atmosphere of the country is polluted and image of the country is tarnished in international forum , but real culprit can not be trapped unless and until effective corrective steps are taken from grass root level. Politicians who cry foul against corruption will have to first clean their own home , own party and own government and then only they will be able to say strongly against corruption of others , of other parties and about other government. Unfortunately whenever crime of one politician is exposed, he gives example of corruption of other politicians to get protection and both of them turn the debate on TV hot and inconclusive. This is why always say that if judiciary and police reforms are expedited and if these two departments start working honestly , sincerely and devotedly, if they are given adequate infrastructure and adequate protection and if their working is not interfered by politicians and VIPs , I have no doubt that volume of corruption will gradually come down and give rise to healthy work culture in our country.

Last but not the least ,I do not mean to say that power has not been misused by the authorities or by concerned persons in DDCA or overspending has not taken place, or misappropriation of money has not taken place in DDCA , but I mean to say that it needs honesty investigation to find the real culprit and not just to conduct a press Conference and sensitise a non-issue or small issue to national issue for suppressing a greater event of corruption which is under investigation of CBI or court of law. Politics is one thing and good governance is entirely a different thing. Media men also cry in tune with their political masters. Arvind Kejriwal can climb to Red Fort and cry loudly that all ministers in UPA government were corrupt and all ministers in current NDA government are corrupt. He can sensitise public mind and give some Masala to TV channels for debate and he can cause some erosion in rising popularity of Mr. Narendra Modi or some of his ministers. Similarly Mr. Kirti Azad may conduct press conference to show audio-video clips to come on national TV and cause some erosion in popularity of Mr. Modi and his government . Similarly Rahul Gandhi from Congress Party may cry from Red Fort that the case filed against him and his colleagues in his party is a political vendetta. Of course these false and unsubstantiated and unproved allegation creates wrong perception about a leader and about a political party or about a business house .This is India where even so called intelligent Indian citizens are misguided by media propaganda and man times honest and devoted leaders become victim of such misinformation campaign and misleading information.

But the need of the hour is to take correct step silently to clean the system from grass root level and inculcate healthy culture in functioning of all offices and departments. All corrupt persons have to be taken to task, there is no second opinion on it. But a guilty person has to be taken to task, one has to prove it by substantial facts and figures before appropriate authorities or file a case in proper court of law. Habit of maligning image of a person or a party in public domain may help in gaining political advantage at the cost of others , but cannot help in reduction of corruption or in changing corrupt culture or in mitigating the pain of common men who are sufferer due to loss of money in pilferages or due to inflated cost in execution of government projects causing grater tax burden on common men.

Each government has to fix accountability and responsibility on guilty officials and guilty politicians who exploit the system by verbal orders and then get exonerated in all scams and when junior officers are made scapegoat. Healthy Culture can be inculcated at all levels starting from primary education upto the judiciary only putting morals in action and not by press conferences or crying in public.

1 comment:

For all failures, all shortcomings and for all mismanagement and mishandling by Kejriwal and AAP government in Delhi, Kejriwal attacks Modi and BJP. His Ministers and party colleagues who have been sent to jail for criminal offenses are also due to Modi.

Kejriwal says that all Officers and all police officers ,all are agent of BJP or B-Team of BJP.He says Congress party is Lso B-Team of BJP. He used to Blame all Ministers of UPA when Congress party was in power.

Now Congress Party has become good for Kejriwal. And all Ministers in BJP led government are Corrupt in his opinion. In opinion of clever Kejriwal, For all good work credit should go to Kejriwal and for all bad happenings, blame goes to Modi.

Only God may save Modi from bad wishes of his opponents. I may simply quote an old proverb for Mr Kejriwal, "bad carpenter quarrels with his tools"